


Dust my mind for fingerprints (they are yours)

by boopboop



Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bad Poetry, Bucky drops tanks on people, Canon Compliant (Mostly), M/M, Steve starts internet fights, Valentine's Day, everything is cute, then everything is cute again, then everything is sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-14
Updated: 2017-02-14
Packaged: 2018-09-24 11:54:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9724379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boopboop/pseuds/boopboop
Summary: Roses are red,Violets are blue,The nazis are dead,I killed them for you.aka Steve and Bucky have an ever evolving list of Valentine's Day traditions and writing bad poetry is just one of them.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Because writing about Steve and Bucky being adorable is so much less destructive than binge watching sad movies and online shopping.

Bucky is Steve's first Valentine. Before he knows anything more that the fact that he wants to spend the rest of his life at Bucky's side, and long before thoughts of more - hands held and kisses shared - he is carefully making Bucky cards out of folded newspaper. Over the years charcoal becomes pencil, becomes ink, becomes paint. Never once does anyone suggest that boys shouldn't be sending other boys fingerprint hearts. By the time it starts to raise eyebrows, Steve is old enough not to give a damn.

Steve isn't Bucky's first Valentine -that dubious honor belongs to Helen Mavis and her swinging blonde pigtails - but Steve's is the first he keeps. He gets two or three a year, anonymous mostly, but sometimes from the more daring girls in school. He knows how to smile nicely and how to sheath a rejection in velvet kindness. The only ones he is interested in are fingerprint smudged and honest, and he keeps them in a box beneath his bed.

Bucky is Steve's first date, milkshakes shared in their favorite spots around the neighborhood and impish grins when waitresses coo and tell them they are far too handsome to spend the day alone. They'll find their someone eventually, that's what they are told every year.

Eventually it becomes fingers laced beneath the tables, extra paints bought for Steve, a new novel bought for Bucky. Practical little things lined with sweetness and necessity. Heartfelt little things waved away as an eccentric but admirable friendship.

The first time they ever spend the day apart, Bucky is in Italy. He shakes the cold out of his fingers and writes optimistic words he's not sure he believes on paper he's traded away his smokes for. He doesn't hear back and wonders if Steve's sharing milkshakes with someone else now.

Steve is, but they are shared only with the promise of help. Two girls from the USO chorus line sit side by side on the foot of his bed, their own letters to sweethearts perched on stocking covered knees, their own tears and their own fears locked behind lovely red smiles as Steve puts pen to paper and paper to trash, repeat, repeat. It's not like he really expects Bucky to overlook the foot and a bit of growth, the two hundred pounds of extra muscle and the blue tights, but poetry has always been a love of his and Steve can try and give him that at least.

Steve is decidedly as unimpressive at writing love poetry as he is at convincing himself he is happy doing what he is doing.

In Poland, a year and what feels like a century more between then and now, Steve crawls into a tent pitched under the stars, his fingers lacing with Bucky's. They close their eyes, and the chill in Bucky's hands can almost be from the ice cold press of the milkshake glass they dream about holding. They fit differently now and have no time to make cards or write poetry or escape into a spot they have known all their lives and laugh at jokes only they know exist. Steve traces fingerprints onto Bucky's skin instead, and the poetry Bucky whispers is etched on both their hearts.

They blow up a Hydra stronghold as they stand side by side and decide that there are some traditions worth adopting.

Then there are no fingerprint kisses, no whispered devotions, not for seventy years.

Steve wakes up in a future beyond the imagination of Bucky's books or their shared hopes. He wanders supermarket aisles overflowing with flowers and candy and glossy cards. The poetry written inside feels hollow and withered. He spends the first Valentines without Bucky sat alone in his small apartment, the radio silent and the street full of life and love just beyond the closed blinds on his windows.

The next year, he takes himself to the art they could never share together. Paintings recovered from the war and museums overflowing with pieces by people who put their emotions on canvas. He spends a day looking for one piece, just one, that expresses what he feels. There is love there, and hope and despair and longing and none of it speaks to him the way his own ink smudges do. So much beauty on those walls, and he knows nothing would make Bucky light up the way his own silly little offerings did.

When Bucky is back - alive, if not within Steve's reach - he spends a whole month trying to recreate every card he's ever made, every letter he's ever written. There are boxes under lock and key in the Smithsonian and he wastes night after night planning every careful step he might take to reclaim them. If he shows them to Bucky - if he finds Bucky - then maybe... maybe....

Someone leaves a folded napkin on Steve's kitchen counter the next year. There is nothing written on it, no ink drawings or tentative words. Just fingerprints, careful and precise in their black ink crispness.

A year later, Steve takes a seat in a clean, clinical lab room and leaves his own fingerprints behind on cool glass. Bucky's hand is only a few inches from his own and it is the closest Steve has been to taking it for more than a lifetime.

The world sets itself on fire a year later. The monsters Steve has been fighting and killing and losing himself for day after day, year after year, take power the way they have always wanted. He stares them down, solid and unrelenting as ever, indifferent in the face of the hatred some of them show him. There is no ink stained napkin, and Steve won't bring danger within a thousand miles of where Bucky sleeps.

A year after that, Bucky drops a tank through his roof, awake and unchained. They find rhythm and comfort in the way their bodies move around each other as they fight and run and fix the things they have always wanted to fix. They don't have to think or even have to feel. They just do. They just are.

Standing strong is easier with Bucky beside him. Everything is easier.

They check into a hotel after, unwilling to share living space with the dead bodies now littering Steve's apartment. Bucky orders room service and sets a milkshake down in front of Steve without a word.

Steve, grinning, grabs hotel stationary and pens:

_Roses are red,_

_Violets are blue,_

_The nazis are dead,_

_I killed them for you._

He slides the poem across to Bucky, who takes it in one hand and reads with the same blank expression he shows most things.

"I told you I was getting better at this writing shit," Steve says, glowing from the inside out, his happiness a real, physical weight in his chest.

Bucky sighs and shake this head. he smiles, and the world remembers how to breathe again. "Tweet it," he says. "There's nothing on tv tonight, so you'll have to start a fight on the internet and entertain me."

"I was just gonna buy you flowers," Steve teases.

Bucky reaches down, laces his fingers with Steve's and presses their hands to the cold milkshake glass. "And they say romance is dead."

"It was sleeping," Steve tells him, "and then it woke up."

Bucky is Steve's first Valentine. His second, his third, his last.


End file.
